TWELVE
It took his legs out from under him, knocking him to the side that had already taken a blow from the quartz, but the stabbing in his chest was nothing compared to the agony--pain too huge to think around, too much pain to even consider--that paralysed his entire body. All his muscles stiffened, his heart felt like it had squeezed shut, and worse than anything his lungs refused to breath. He could only suck in tiny half-sips of air. Worst of all, worst than anything, was the feeling in his head as if someone far off were howling in agony, which petrified him even as he thought, yes, keep screaming, someone will hear you, someone will come help me--
Then he recognised his own voice; he was screaming, and nobody was coming at all.
Somehow he would have to get himself going again, crawling up those stairs. There were only four to the top. It might as well have been miles.
He managed a single stair, crawling on his elbows, shuddering before Malfoy caught him by the back of the cloak.
"What the hell did was that?"
"The Cruciatus Curse. Might want to pick it up yourself, one day."
Lucius hauled him roughly to the bottom of the stairs, then hurled him to the floor, banging his ribs so hard that Harry saw a flash of purple light behind his squeezed-shut eyes. He felt something dripping from the corner of his mouth and swiped it with his hand. The hand came away smeared scarlet.
"That's the one." A hard kick fell on his already damaged side. "Little bastard. That's the one I saw in the hall. We've got to get him out of here if we're going to do anything. Somebody's bound to have heard his noise."
"No. There's a Blocking Spell on this whole hallway now. No one's going to be coming. We've got time." His tone made time sound like a very, very menacing thing to have.
Harry rolled his eyes up to Severus. There were burns on his face, not bad ones, but on the pale skin they looked huge and discoloured.
"So I wasn't wrong, then," said Severus. "The Potters really are multiplying. I don't know how you got here, but don't think for a minute I don't know who you are."
"Severus, someone's coming." Lucius sounded panicky.
"Nobody's coming; there's a Block up!" He turned back to Harry. "Why are you here?"
He couldn't think to talk. His lips parted, and a syrupy mix of drool and sticky blood flowed over his chin, his neck, into the front of his robes.
"I think you knocked him stupid with whatever that was, Severus."
"More's the pity. Go back to the dorms and get one of your lot. Get Goyle; he's the biggest. We're taking him to the Forest."
Malfoy nodded, then ran back down the hall.
When he was gone, Severus caught Harry by the throat and lifted, his thumb digging into the knot of gristle behind Harry's adam's-apple as he pressed him against the wall at eye-level. Harry half-choked, half-sneezed a spray of dark red droplets, which splattered over Severus's unblinking face.
"You're not fooling anyone. I didn't knock anything out of you with that. Now tell me why you're here and how you came."
"Can't . . . very well . . . talk . . . you holding me . . . like this."
Severus suddenly frowned, looking confused, like a dog on the hunt led up a false trail. He glanced down at Harry's arm, then suddenly ripped back the left sleeve of Harry's robes. Severus circled his forearm with his fingers, stroking very slowly from wristbone to elbow, almost a caress as he traced the length of Harry's wrist. As he did the pressure on Harry's throat slackened, then drew tight as a noose when Severus dropped the arm and thrust his face to his.
"You've got it, too," he said slowly. "It's just not where I can see it, is it?"
The edges of Harry's vision started to throb and turn grey, rapidly brightening to white. If he passed out before he could answer, Severus would kill him, right here in the halls, and probably get away with it. A very clear image came to mind: Hagrid patrolling the Forbidden Forest, thirty years from now, stumbling across a very small stack of bones and wondering who they might have once been. The picture of this gave him a fresh burst of strength.
Twisting against the hand on his throat, blood pounding his head, Harry felt his feet scuffle against the stone wall and looked dead in the face of Severus Snape, close enough to see the faint, splintered bronze flecks in his dark eyes.
There was still one trick left, and if it didn't work, he was dead. No one here would even notice he was gone, so he had to make it count. With what remained of his rational mind he thought, Might as well try. Been meaning to do it for a couple years now, anyway.
He brought his knee up and drove it into Severus's balls.
Harry hit the floor in a heap, the jar knocking his ribs again and his head spinning. Snape, too, was on his floor, holding himself. He made a grab for Harry, but the shock of landing had done a great job of clearing some of the red mist from Harry's brain. He stomped on the hand that came for him, then bolted for the stairs, glancing behind him as he got his wand back into his hand once more. Lucius had returned, alone, and was helping Severus to his feet.
Like a bad dream starting from the beginning, worse than before, a woman's voice above him shouted, "Potter, what are you doing here?"
Professor Evensong caught hold of his arm and bore down on it, hard. As she did, he heard a sound like a door closing. The outside world went smudgy and vague as she dragged him up the remaining stairs.
From the lower floor he heard Malfoy shout: "Damn it! He Disapparated!"
"How could he fucking Disapparate? You can't Disapparate in Hogwarts! Go get Goyle!" The sound of boots on stone as Snape struggled to his feet again.
"Think I may have ruined your next date, Professor," Harry panted, not quite in control of himself yet.
"Gods, you're hurt. What were you thinking?" She sounded as if she were speaking in a very small room. "You haven't any business here. Neither of us does."
He clutched his ribs. His heart still felt constricted, as if litres of blood were trying to squeeze their way through too-small veins. "Actually, I'm just finding out I have quite a lot of business on this side."
"Come on." She jerked him, hard enough to start him moving forward in spite of the throbbing pain in his side. "I've got very little time before this Transtempulary Potion wears off. Keep hold to me."
"No." He halted in his tracks. The fog in his brain seemed to clear. "Snape is plotting something against my father. On this side. I've got to find out what it is."
"Whatever it is, it's already happened. You've no protection on this side, Harry; you've forgotten just where you are."
"In Hogwarts. In the version of Hogwarts where my parents and Snape are students at the same time." He tried to jerk away again, but her grip seemed fastened to his bones.
"Yes, yes, I know that," she hissed, as if an alternative Hogwarts resided behind most of the world's bookcases. "And do you remember who's still at his full power on this side? Who probably knows you're here already? You don't exist here, Harry. If the Dark Lord came for you on this side nobody would even notice you were gone."
"How would he know I was here? How could he even know who I was?"
"I told you. Dark calls to dark, and you reek of him. He'd smell you out like a dire hound hunting a rabbit. And even if he didn't, that mad-man was going to kill you just then; he still will, if he catches you. Come on! I've got less than a minute to get you home before I end up back at the other Hogwarts." She jerked him toward the stairwell.
Just as hard, Harry jerked her in the opposite direction. "That way's the cellars. The library's this way!"
Footsteps on the stairs. Evensong shook her head, glancing over her shoulder. Severus had followed him, still limping, his face a masque of fury as his fierce eyes darted all about, trying to find the person who had eluded him.
"The library passage is the way in. The way out is through the sub-cellar. It leads off one corner. It should already be open. Go on, Harry!" Her body seemed to flicker, like a candle guttering out. She gave him a hard push toward the cellar steps vanishing like smoke as she let go of his hand.
As soon as she did, Severus seemed to spot him. "Opticallis nox!"
"Arrest!" Whatever Severus had thrown at him seemed to bend and curve to the other side. From the sound of it, it had been a Blind-Eye curse. Some times the things you learned in Dark Arts really did pay off. "Stupefy!"
"Arrest!" He was quick; Harry would have to be faster.
There wasn't time enough to be fast. Harry threw himself down the narrow steps to the sub-cellar, came to a landing, twisted around it, and kept heading down, deep into the sour-smelling pits six storeys below. He couldn't go on much longer while the Cruciatus Curse was still filling him with the desire to simply lie down and let himself be killed by the next thing that came along, anything to end the agony. Severus Snape was hard on his heels. The door to the sub-cellar lay just ahead; he wrenched at the handle, but it did not give.
"Alohomora," he tried, and wrenched it again. It didn't budge. He kicked it above the lock, then attempted the wand again. "Alohomora! Alohomora, you son-of-a-bitch!" The hinges were caked with years of orange rust, as was the lock. It probably wasn't even locked at all, only stuck tight.
"Fine then!" He pointed the wand. "Reducto!"
The door fragmented and blew inward.
There in the corner was the door, open, just as Evensong had promised. Harry had never been so grateful to see an open door in his life. He went through it, and the world seemed to twist.
Through a law of physics he would never understand, found himself running out the same way, into the same sub-cellar. He almost turned back, confused and terrified that he might have somehow gotten turned around in the short passage and was actually running toward Severus. This sub-cellar, however, contained Evensong, who threw her arms out wide and caught him before his blind fear and momentum could send him barrelling into the wall. She spun around with him, lessening his speed before letting him crash into a soft heap of burlaps sacks.
Her white hair lifted nearly straight from her head. "Stay behind me, Harry, and for the Lady's sake--"
He was coming through the passage now, they could both hear him.
"--cover your ears!"
Severus stepped through the passage, Hogwarts robes swirling about his feet. His attention went first to Harry and then to the more immediate threat of the banshee. His wand came out. Evensong inhaled deeply, her eyes turning from grey to red and back again and her unbound hair swirling in a blinding cloud around her, just as Snape came down the stairs into the sub-cellar.
Harry was conscious enough to think that this should really be interesting.
Whatever ungodly sound she might have been preparing died at the sight of Snape. "What are you doing?"
Without pause Severus fired at her, shouting, "Avada kevadra!"
There was a flash of unbearable green lightning, streaking down from nowhere, centring on Evensong. Her whole body flashed emerald-bright, seemingly from within, her outline burning brilliant white through the thick velvets she wore. The face Harry knew melted, caved in on itself, and all that was left was a wild-haired, red-eyed banshee. Snape screamed something--it might have been her name, Harry couldn't be sure. Things were piling one after the other, and nothing felt quite real. He found himself crawling to Evensong's side, barely aware that he was doing it.
Her mouth opened wide, as if trying to scream, but nothing came out but a dry, feeble croak. She was still alive. "Severus."
Neither of them heard her. For the longest time--longer than a minute--the two men stared each other down, black eyes to black. It was unbearable to watch, wondering or perhaps even knowing exactly what both of them were thinking, watching cogs turn, attacks forming and failing in their minds.
"Paradox?" Severus asked at last.
"Paradox," Snape assured.
Severus raised his wand. Snape did the same. Harry felt cold all over, trembling beyond even the Cruciatus curse. The implications of all this soared past him. If they duelled, whichever one of them took the worse of it didn't matter. If Snape killed Severus, he would be killed. If Severus killed Snape . . . .
They were using the same wands. He knew what happened when two brother wands met in a duel; what would happen if the same wand, with the same wielder, was forced to match itself?
The minute Evensong cried out, he knew she'd seen it too. Somehow she made it to her feet, her commanding voice ringing out in the tiny room. "Severus, stop!"
She was talking to the man but both of them turned around, the younger as if in shock. Now Harry knew how the younger Snape must have felt when he said the Potters were multiplying.
Snape recovered first, snapping his attentions back to the other one. "Crucio!"
It hit him full-force, straight on--a blazing ray of dark, ugly scarlet. The sight of it seared Harry's good eye; he buried his face in the dark of the sacks, but that single streak remained on the inside of his eyelid. Twice in my life now that's happened to me, he thought, and shuddered.
The force knocked Severus backwards, almost into the passageway. His eyes rolled back in their sockets, all the way back to the whites, and his head tilted backwards.
Snape was at his side, his hand on Harry's shoulder. "Potter, are you all right?"
"Uh, no." Without warning he felt as if he were going to be sick. He retched loudly, coughed, then spat out a slimy lump of something blackish which left a taste in his mouth like wet copper. He couldn't look at it long without feeling sick. "No, definitely not all right."
"We'll have you out of here in a minute. Don't move. Yvaine?" When she didn't respond, he grabbed her by the arms and shook her frantically. "Yvaine?"
"I'm here, Severus. I'm all right. Stunned a bit."
"I shouldn't doubt it. I need you to help me. We've got to get him back down the passage before it closed again."
Slouched in the passageway, Severus's eyes came back down. They focused on Snape, and with a catlike swipe grabbed his wand off the floor.
"Snape, he's got his wand!" Harry shouted. Knees tripping over his own robes, he fumbled for his wand, aiming it at the chest of the monster in black robes. At the same moment, Evensong's powerful voice pealed like the tolling of the tower bells. "Drop it!" Somehow both of them were a fraction of a second too late.
"Avada--"
"Probably a really bad idea for a seventh year to try that one. Especially twice in a night."
Dumbledore stood at the top of the stairs.
Harry didn't look at him; his focus was still on Severus. He didn't know what he was going to say until it came out. "Reducto!"
There was a concussive blast, deafening in the small space.
Snape fell to the floor.
And Evensong let out a howl to rouse the dead.
